The present invention relates to a disposable absorbent product. Typical disposable absorbent products include tissues, wipes, and such wearable disposable absorbent products as diapers, feminine care products, incontinent care products, surgical gowns and drapes, and the like.
Tests conducted by medically trained personnel, e.g., physicians, nurses, medical technologists, and the like, have long been done and are well established. Although such tests have become increasingly complex and sophisticated, they also are becoming more costly. Consequently, current socioeconomic trends have given rise to a heightened interest in procedures or measurements which a person conducts on himself or herself for the purpose of acquiring information on a physiologically relevant condition, referred to hereinafter as user self-tests or USTs. Such tests frequently are carried out without consultation with a health care professional.
USTs are not new. Traditional USTs include measuring one's body weight and temperature. More contemporary procedures include blood glucose measurements, ovulation tests, and tests for the presence of human chorionic gonadotropin in urine, the basis of home pregnancy tests. More recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a UST for blood cholesterol. Interestingly, USTs for urinary glucose date back to the early 1900's and became more popular with the advent of insulin as a treatment for diabetes in 1922.
The use and acceptance of USTs are influenced by a variety of factors, including test simplicity, emotional aversion, medical relevance, consumer use history, and test interpretation. By way of illustration, the utility of measuring body temperature is well known and, in practice, deviations from normal body temperature often are used to determine if a medical professional needs to be consulted. Conversely, the initial use of home pregnancy tests was limited by a lack of testing experience and confidence in results, as well as by a cumbersome test format. Not until after several years of availability did these tests evolve to be user friendly and accurate, characteristics important to their market acceptance. The marketing experience for tests for in-home blood glucose monitoring, now a non-prescription (over-the-counter or OTC) UST, was similar.
The emergence of USTs as a component of clinical chemistry and, in general, health care, is to be applauded. Moreover, the number and quality of USTs are likely to increase in the future. However, USTs in general involve procedures which must be followed precisely, particularly with respect to the times for carrying out multistep procedures and determining or estimating the result. In addition, USTs typically utilize devices which have no purpose or function other than for carrying out the proscribed test.
Disposable absorbent products have been used in clinical chemistry, principally as collection devices. For example, disposable diapers have been used to collect urine samples from infants and tampons have been utilized to collect cervical cells. In addition, tampons have been used diagnostically, e.g., for the detection of increased dehydrogenases or oxidases in vaginal secretions. Such tampons, however, are used solely as clinical chemistry specimen collection devices. Their use must be supervised by a health care professional and they have many of the same limitations as USTs.